As the Internet continues to grow, consumers are able to access unprecedented amounts of information about the products and services produced worldwide. Unfortunately, while users are easily able to access such information and find details of such products, many of the websites which provide such information do not have any mechanism that allows the manufacturer to sell online. Indeed, private websites and small company's websites are often rich with information on the company's products, but void of any mechanism to purchase such products online.
Other companies have portals, company websites, and manufacturer pages that allow a consumer to order online, but only after a more or less intense registration process. At such sites the user has to give all of his or her personal information, banking data, etc. Once the consumer has registered with the website, he or she then has to select the product and amount to be ordered, the shipping method, etc., which greatly increases the time of the ordering process.
Even on such websites where products may be ordered through such a process, the user still may not complete the purchase if there is no trust in the sellers website, if the consumer requires shipping, payment methods or other features that are not offered by the merchant, if the consumer cannot order the amount desired, e.g. only one product desired in the case of a business to consumer (B2C) transaction on a business to business (B2B) website, or 1,000 units desired in the case of a B2B desired transaction on a B2C website. The transaction may also not be successful for other reasons, such as the product is not publically on sale, no pricing in the currency of the buyer is available, no description in the language of the buyer is available, the Taxes and Duties are unclear, no contact information is provided, and many other issues. Basically, all these issues can prevent a successful transaction even though the seller wants to sell and the consumer wants to buy.
While the preceding provides an overview of the challenges that often prevent successful e-commerce transactions, the following will provide more specific examples of some of the common issues that prevent completion of desired transactions.
In the following discussion the examples will use two hypothetical companies. The first is a small U.S. company called, e.g., “U.S. Seller” has a local website showing their vast product portfolio, including their specialty pipes, to their customers. Even if U.S. Seller is manufacturing high quality products in many different variances, the typical customer for this company located in the United States is also located in the U.S., is a native English speaker and pays in U.S. dollars. As such, the whole website is in English, prices are indicated in dollars ($) and shipping services are only available to US Customers (because U.S. Seller only offers shipping via FedEx, only within the U.S., and the shipping rates are also indicated only for this scenario). Furthermore, since sales are contemplated only to domestic customers, the only information for taxes relates to which State in which the consumer is located. No other Taxes and Duties information is provided to potentially interested cross border customers.
The second company in the following discussion is a small German company specializing in the manufacturing of high end bicycles called, e.g., DE Bikemaker, which employs a team of engineers developing new bicycles including all aspects of product development. Since a new bike prototype requires specially designed pipes, one engineer started looking for potential sources, as usual today, online. After she found only one manufacturer in the Netherlands whose prices were not really competitive, she started looking for alternatives. She was referred to U.S. Seller's website from an article she found online. After having searched on an online search engine, she now is on the website of U.S. Seller.
The first hurdle that is encountered that may result in a transaction not being completed is the language of the U.S. Seller's website. Because the engineer's English is not sophisticated enough to find all required information (the company in the Netherlands had a website in German), U.S. Seller is not considered as a material provider and is not further considered. In other words, the failure of the website to provide information in the language of the potential customer has resulted in a lost opportunity to make a sale.
If, however, the engineer were used to working through such a language hurdle, or if her English were good enough to determine the information that she needs, U.S. Seller might still make a sale. However, the engineer now faces another hurdle to successful completion of the transaction: Currency. That is, if she is able to read or translate the information on the website, she might find the pipes for which she is looking. Thereafter, she begins comparing their characteristics to the ones she has already found. Assuming that the pipes are technically the same to the ones in the Netherlands, she wants to compare their purchase against those in the Netherlands, but the prices are not comparable at all because of the different currencies used by the sellers. The price she has from the company in the Netherlands is in euros () while U.S. Seller's website displays their prices in dollars ($). Further, the pricing information provided on the website does not include any quantity or other discounts to the shown pricing as may be expected in a commercial transaction and as may already be possessed by the engineer from the potential supplier in the Netherlands. Again, at this point U.S. Seller may not be considered as a material provider and is not further considered. In other words, the failure of the website to provide information in the currency of the potential customer and the failure of the website to provide information regarding possible discounts based on quantity, etc. have resulted in a lost opportunity to make a sale.
If, however, the engineer were able to estimate the costs of her order or do a currency conversion, she might get comparable prices to those from the supplier in the Netherlands. Imaging that the engineer is curious and does the currency conversion and that U.S. Seller is still competitive, yet another hurdle is encountered to successful completion of the transaction: Shipping. Since there is no shipping option available on the U.S. Seller website to deliver products to Germany (even if the order volumes DE Bikemaker requires would make ocean freight delivery very reasonable and competitive to the company in the Netherlands), the engineer cannot compare the cost of such shipping. As such, at this point U.S. Seller may not be considered as a material provider and is not further considered. In other words, the failure of the website to provide information regarding the availability and cost of shipping to the location of the potential customer has resulted in a lost opportunity to make a sale.
If, however, the engineer were a logistics expert and were able to estimate the costs for shipping very realistically from the U.S. to Germany, and assuming that the outcome of that estimation leads to the fact that U.S. Seller is still competitive, the Engineer might continue with the potential transaction. However, still yet another hurdle is encountered to successful completion of the transaction: Taxes & Duties. That is, even if shipping costs can be estimated correctly, the Taxes & Duties that are required to import products into the EU are not included. Because the engineer knows that Taxes and Duties have to be paid for importing pipes into the EU, but because no information to that effect is provided, the engineer cannot compare U.S. Seller's pipes to those from the company in the Netherlands. As such, at this point U.S. Seller may not be considered as a material provider and is not further considered. In other words, the failure of the website to provide information regarding the Taxes & Duties of importing their products into the location of the potential customer has resulted in a lost opportunity to make a sale.
If, however, the engineer is also a Tax and Duty expert and as such is aware of the Tax and Duty relevance, she may be able (and willing) to find the required Harmonized System (HS) Code online, e.g. on the World Trade Organization (WTO) website. She may then be able and willing to search for the relevant Tax & Duty online, e.g. on dutycalculator.com. After all of that effort, however, she will again have to do a currency conversion, this time also including the estimated shipping costs. After all of this extra effort, none of which is required for the website of the company in the Netherlands, she may come to the conclusion that U.S. Seller still is very competitive. Based on this conclusion, she requires a detailed offer from U.S. Seller.
However, still yet a further hurdle is encountered to successful completion of the transaction: Contacting. In attempting to contact U.S. Seller regarding the required detailed offer, the engineer identifies that there is no electronic contact possibility provided the website. Like many current websites, only a physical address of U.S. Seller is provided. Because the engineer would most likely not be willing to write a mail inquiry to the company and wait for the return, at this point U.S. Seller may not be considered as a material provider and is not further considered. In other words, the failure of the website to provide electronic contact information has resulted in a lost opportunity to make a sale.
If, however, the engineer not only a Tax & Duty Specialist, Logistic Expert and Translation Master for Text and Currency, but she is also able to find the name of the owner of U.S. Seller and the electronic contact information for the owner online, e.g. on social media, she might decide to send an email regarding her inquiry to the owner of the company. However, still yet a final hurdle is encountered to successful completion of the transaction: Deciding & Reconfirmation. That is, when finally an email reaches the owner from Germany showing a great opportunity to him, the owner notes that there are various estimations from the engineer that he does not fully trust, e.g. the currency exchange rate may not be current when he reads the email and the shipping costs have been estimated way to high from his experience. In view of this questionable information, he may not be willing to take the effort of getting in touch with someone to explore the details and costs of shipping the goods to Germany, doing Customs clearance and so on. As such, he may simply not reply to the email or he may send a negative response.
If, however, the owner already had comparable requests and trusts in the numbers he sees from the engineer in Germany, including any price discounting requested by the engineer based on quantity of the potential order, he might actually close the deal.
Considering all of the hurdles discussed in the simplified example, and all of the “—buts”, the likelihood of making a successful transaction is very small. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that such experience in all of the different fields discussed above is possessed by the typical buyer or engineer in such a business transaction. Further, it is even more unlikely that such information is possessed by and that such effort would be undertaken by an end consumer (as opposed to the business customer of the above example) to get a simple pricing estimation on a product from cross border.
As clearly illustrated above, the limitation is that a potential merchant has to put a lot of effort into selling products (especially globally) and therefore often does not even try to do so. Possibly worse yet, the merchant tries to supply all of the relevant information, but fails partly by not offering everything a potential customer requires. What is needed is a system and method to construct e-commerce webpages that can convert provided information and supply missing information relevant to a consumer to allow easy comparison and completion of a proposed transaction.
Embodiments of the present invention provide such a system and method. Indeed, embodiments of the present invention provide the buyer with the power to control the buying environment completely. Such systems and methods do not yet exist anywhere in the world. Because a principle behind such embodiments is bringing the power to sell from the seller to the buyer, i.e. enabling the buyer to make a holistic and reliable buying offer based on the provision of webpages that supply all of the relevant information as needed by the buyer, it is completely new and turns around the existing principles of doing business in the online world. Prior systems and methods of constructing webpages for e-commerce were based on the principle that only someone who wanted to sell something and also provided the required prerequisites (translation, currency, pricing, discounts, shipping, payments, Taxes and Duties, etc.), was able to sell something. With embodiments of the present invention, everyone could become a merchant, even if he/she did not intend to do so.
These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.